General Election Day
General Election Day in the United States is a significant event where citizens exercise their democratic right to vote for federal offices, including the presidency, members of the House of Representatives, and, since the ratification of the 17th Amendment, senators. Established by Congress in 1845, General Election Day occurs on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November every four years, ensuring uniformity across states. Over the years, various amendments have expanded voting rights and eliminated restrictions based on race, gender, and economic status, culminating in the widespread enfranchisement seen today. While absentee and vote-by-mail options have evolved, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, many states also offer early voting to accommodate diverse voter needs.
Despite the importance of this civic duty, voter turnout remains a concern, with many eligible voters not participating in elections. Organizations and educational programs aim to raise awareness about the necessity of voting and registration. The debate on whether to designate Election Day as a national holiday continues, with advocates highlighting work-related barriers to voting, while others suggest improving overall voting accessibility. This dialogue reflects ongoing efforts to enhance participation and commitment to democratic values in the modern era.
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General Election Day
Voting is both a right and, many feel, an obligation of United States citizenship. The power of the people to choose those who guide their public affairs is one of the principal advantages and ultimate safeguards of democracy.
The date reserved for elections varied from state to state during the early years of the nation; elections could be held at any point within thirty-four days prior to the first Wednesday in December. One of the biggest issues that critics of this method had was the concern that those voting later in some states might be influenced by votes that had already been cast in other states. In 1845, the United States Congress took an important step toward establishing uniformity in federal elections by decreeing the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November to be the legal day every four years for the selection of presidential and vice-presidential electors. An 1872 federal statute set the same day for the biennial election of members of the United States House of Representatives. Since the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, United States Senators have also been elected by the people on that day.
The United States Constitution gives each state the right to establish voting qualifications for federal electors, and at various times the states have enfranchised only those persons who could meet property ownership, age, sex, residence, or other requirements. However, the adoption of several amendments to the Constitution in and since 1870 has considerably limited the restrictions that the states may set. The 15th Amendment enfranchised those who had previously been denied voting rights because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The 19th Amendment enfranchised women. The 24th Amendment prohibited the imposition of a poll tax as a requirement for voting in national elections. In addition, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests and similar devices that had been used to deny the ballot to qualified voters and enabled the United States attorney general to send federal registrars into states and counties in which less than one-half of the voting-age population was registered. In 1971, the 26th Amendment set the voting age at eighteen for all elections.
Beginning as early as the Revolutionary War, some exceptions were made for select voters who were unable to cast their ballots in person. By the Civil War in the 1860s, a full process was put in place for absentee voting to ensure that soldiers' voices could be included from battlefields during elections. While such absentee voting was, for some time, restricted to those who had suitable excuses for not being able to vote in person, as society advanced in terms of mobility and population size, with workers in certain industries unable to get to polling stations on Election Day, more states began to permit absentee voting as a regular option without any prerequisites. In the late 1970s, the state of California became the first to allow for the request of absentee ballots by any voters without an excuse. Other states made similar or even greater expansions toward more options for casting a vote without going in person, including Oregon, which started conducting elections solely through ballots mailed to voters in 1995; people could then return the ballot by mail or drop it off at a secure location. While only the additional states of Hawaii, Washington State, Utah, and Colorado had instituted an election system in which ballots were only distributed through the mail and not all states allowed for no-excuse absentee or vote-by-mail requests, during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020, a greater number of voters were able to vote by mail in many states (several states made at least temporary adjustments to increase accessibility to this option) for that year's general election than ever before due to widespread concerns over public health safety. Absentee and vote-by-mail voting was some of the first early voting permissible, but as more arguments were made for improving the convenience of voting, Texas began implementing early in-person voting prior to Election Day, and a large number of other states followed in subsequent years. Though the time period during which early voting could occur varied by state, as of 2020 the National Conference of State Legislatures estimated that the average starting time for early voting was twenty-two days before Election Day.
Many Americans, however, do not exercise their right to vote. Even in national elections the voter turnout rate has often barely been half of the eligible voters. Organizations such as the League of Women Voters conduct massive campaigns every election year to educate Americans on the necessity of registering and the importance of voting. Most public schools hold special programs designed to acquaint future voters with their rights and responsibilities.
Because modern society is drastically different from the nineteenth-century society in which the date for holding elections was set, a debate has continued into the twenty-first century regarding whether the date for those who want to vote in person should either be moved or recognized as a national holiday to ensure that all eligible citizens can participate and that a national commitment to democracy is demonstrated. Critics argue that the hours set for voting prevent many from getting to the polls on a Tuesday as it is a work day for most. At the same time, others concerned about polling congestion advocated for focusing on increasing the methods and periods for voting rather than making Election Day a national holiday.
Bibliography
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